by Carl Dennis
Still, I have to admit I was tempted this afternoon,
As I stood in a guildhall square by a clock tower,
To liken you to the painted soldier
Lurching from his house high in the clock face
To tap the rim of his drum two times.
He looked so full of his mission, so solemn,
As if without his efforts the dome of the sky,
Turning too slow or fast, would begin to wobble,
And crack in the middle, and come crashing down.
All around him the visible face of the landscape
Cried out for attention, the cry I’ve been hearing
These last few days and answering as best I can
Without the contributions you might have made.
At least I haven’t distracted myself from the moment
With thinking of projects I’ve left half-finished.
At least I know my friends can get on without me,
The gap I’ve left in their days already closing
While I give my attention to vistas
Far more flamboyant than I imagined.
As I left the square to walk the ramparts,
The soldier was jerking back to his tin house
For another hour of practice.
Three o’clock would be here,
With all its responsibilities, before he knew it.
Is it fair to liken his theory of time to yours?
To me you seem to regard a day as water
Dripping from your cupped fingers,
Each drop a loss you’ll have to account for
On the day of judgment you say you don’t believe in.
Everyone, to be sure, can use a metaphor.
I don’t deny I want to believe this landscape
Has been waiting eons for eyes like mine,
As tender and clear and steady,
And has taken a vow to hold back nothing.
There’s nothing wrong with imagining missions
So long as we understand why we choose them,
And approve our motives, and debate alternatives.
Consider our brother in his windowless tin house,
The good it would do him to ask why it seems so fine,
When he could be elsewhere, to wait in the dark,
Shoulders thrown back, for his cue.
Numbers
Two hands may not always be better than one,
But four feet and more are likely to prove
More steady than two as we wade a stream
Holding above our heads the ark
Of our covenant with the true and beautiful,
A crowd of outlaw pagans hot on our heels,
The shades of our ancestors cheering us on.
Three friends with poems at Mac’s this evening
Are closer than one to the truth if we lift our glasses
To the poet that Mac proposes
We toast before beginning, Li Po.
Three votes that the poem I’ve brought is finished
Versus one turn of the head too slight
For anyone not on the watch to notice
As Li Po demurs.
Is this America, land of one man, one vote,
I want to ask, or the China of one-man rule,
Of emperors who believe they’re gods?
Li Po, now only a thin layer of dust
In Szechwan Province though somehow
Still standing inches behind his words.
Five of my lines, he suggests with a nod,
Out of the score I’ve written,
Are fine as they are if I provide them
The context that they deserve and speak them
Without misgivings and with greater gusto.
Five lead out from the kitchen
Past a dozen detours to a single bridge
That must be crossed in order to reach a homeland
Eager for my arrival.
This is the message I get from a prophet whose signs
Are a threadbare coat and an empty cupboard,
Proof he’s never written for anyone but himself
And the dead teachers easy to count
On the stiff fingers of one hand.
IN MEMORY OF MACHAMMOND
The Fallen
Now that a year’s gone by since your enemy
From childhood on, implacable diabetes,
Finally defeated you, it’s time for you to appear
In dream, your sight restored, your indignant beard
Peaceably trimmed, your prophet’s brow,
Creased before by the world’s injustices,
Smooth as you take a chair at my bedside.
You’ll have come to tell me the relief I felt
When your heart gave out after a day at the hospital
Was only natural, natural for a friend
Who was glad you’d given the slip at last
To a body that was never loyal,
To a servant plotting still more betrayals.
With a doctor’s graceful bedside manner, you’ll say
That if I begrudged you an extra portion of sympathy
I have nothing to be ashamed of.
Your loneliness must have felt to me like a pit
Too vast to be filled, while duties more doable
Called for attention, and I wanted to make a difference,
To see in people around me proof of my power.
There’s a time for remorse, your ghost will explain,
And a time to believe the future offers occasions
More ample than those yet offered
For making improvements and moving on.
I’m listening to the speech I’m having you make
About the forgiveness filling your heart
Even if I was common enough to wish
Simply to spend my leisure in cheerier company,
With friends less retrospective, distant, and death-bound.
You’re linking my lapse to the lapse that Milton, your hero,
Attributed to the pair who brought Eden down.
The will, I’m waiting for you to say, is composed
Of many voices, and of these only one
Can be labeled fallen, one selfish voice
Clamoring for the floor in the chamber of voices
When the soul convenes far enough from the street
To hear itself debating.
Just one sleek speaker who argues the point
That the suffering overseas is a quagmire
Best avoided, however pure our intentions.
A voice that more often than not
Fails to persuade the others, and when it succeeds
Leaves them all feeling small and stingy.
IN MEMORY OF BURTON WEBER
Eurydice
If the dead could speak, I’d entreat you
Not to blame yourself for losing me near the exit.
I was gone before you turned to glimpse me.
Your hope I would follow you into the light—
That was only a poet’s faith in the power of music.
I followed as far as the law of Hell allowed me
And then turned back to my dark home.
For us to live together, you’d have to descend
Again to the place that chills the heart of the living.
I wouldn’t want you to lie awake beside me
Straining to look on the bright side,
Spinning out plan after plan full of adventure.
I wouldn’t want you to wait with patience
For my reply, to assume my lengthening silence
A thoughtful prologue. The hours would grow into years
While you dreamed up a song about our ascent
Meant for the ears of friends on our arrival.
I wouldn’t want to hear it dwindle and fade
As the truth gradually came into focus
And you slowly deferred to a greater power.
Who would you be t
hen? No one I know,
Not the man who thought his music enlarged creation.
If I could speak, child of the sun,
I’d assure you I’m still your wife.
That’s why I want you to stay as long as you can
Just as you are, the mistaken
Hopeful man I married.
The Lace Maker
Holding the bobbins taut as she moves the pins,
She leans in close, inches away from the fabric
Fretted and framed on the wooden work board.
A young woman in a yellow dress
Whose lighter hair, bound tight to her head
But flowing about one shoulder,
Suggests the self-forgetful beauty of service,
Service to a discipline. Just so the painting
Forgets the background to focus on her.
Here she is, so close to the surface
The painter could touch her if he stretched his hand.
Close work in sympathy with close work.
The sewing cushion holding the colored threads
Suggests a painter’s palette. So Vermeer
Offers a silent tribute to another artist
Who’s increasing the number of beautiful
Useless things available in a world
That would be darker and smaller without them.
This is no time to ask if the woman
Wishes she were rich enough to buy the likeness,
If Vermeer can afford the lace she’s making;
No time to consider them bandying compliments.
They work in silence, and you may look on
Only if you quiet your thoughts enough
To hear the click of her needles as you lean in close
(But not so close that you cast a shadow)
And the light touch of his brush on canvas.
Progressive Health
We here at Progressive Health would like to thank you
For being one of the generous few who’ve promised
To bequeath your vital organs to whoever needs them.
Now we’d like to give you the opportunity
To step out far in front of the other donors
By acting a little sooner than you expected,
Tomorrow, to be precise, the day you’re scheduled
To come in for your yearly physical. Six patients
Are waiting this very minute in intensive care
Who will likely die before another liver
And spleen and pairs of lungs and kidneys
Match theirs as closely as yours do. Twenty years,
Maybe more, are left you, granted, but the gain
Of these patients might total more than a century.
To you, of course, one year of your life means more
Than six of theirs, but to no one else,
No one as concerned with the general welfare
As you’ve claimed to be. As for your poems—
The few you may have it in you to finish—
Even if we don’t judge them by those you’ve written,
Even if we assume you finally stage a breakthrough,
It’s doubtful they’ll raise one Lazarus from a grave
Metaphoric or literal. But your body is guaranteed
To work six wonders. As for the gaps you’ll leave
As an aging bachelor in the life of friends,
They’ll close far sooner than the open wounds
Soon to be left in the hearts of husbands and wives,
Parents and children, by the death of the six
Who now are failing. Just imagine how grateful
They’ll all be when they hear of your grand gesture.
Summer and winter they’ll visit your grave, in shifts,
For as long as they live, and stoop to tend it,
And leave it adorned with flowers or holly wreaths,
While your friends, who are just as forgetful
As you are, just as liable to be distracted,
Will do no more than a makeshift job of upkeep.
If the people you’ll see tomorrow pacing the halls
Of our crowded facility don’t move you enough,
They’ll make you at least uneasy. No happy future
Is likely in store for a man like you whose conscience
Will ask him to certify every hour from now on
Six times as full as it was before, your work
Six times as strenuous, your walks in the woods
Six times as restorative as anyone else’s.
Why be a drudge, staggering to the end of your life
Under this crushing burden when, with a single word,
You could be a god, one of the few gods
Who, when called on, really listens?
More Art
Why drive home to your empty house and your plans,
Still vague, for grasping life by the forelock
When across the street from the bank where your job
In home loans may soon prove expendable
The action’s already begun on the big screen
Of the Granger Theater. Come watch
As a pale-faced stewardess runs down the aisle
To the row where a man sits with a notebook
Long past midnight, when everyone else is sleeping.
He’s taken the flight from Spokane to Cleveland
More than a hundred times without incident;
But now as he tinkers with his five-part program
For safe investments and early retirement,
He feels a hand on his shoulder, and looking up
Faces the pale stewardess, who motions him forward,
Up to the cockpit. The pilot has had a stroke
And the drunk copilot can’t be wakened.
So the man, who looks from your vantage point
High in the balcony like your brother Herman,
Straps himself in to confront, five miles above Ohio,
A yard-high panel of flashing lights
While a crackly voice comes over the radio.
It’s the flight controller, Miss Wu,
Who promises to lead him step by step
To a happy landing, though her wobbling pitch
Suggests she’s never before talked anyone down.
Hard for you to sit still and watch in silence,
Given your joy that a man who drove to the airport
Two hours early, fearful of heavy traffic,
Is having a real adventure thrust upon him.
Now above the static he hears the sound of rustling
As Miss Wu unfolds a drawing of the instrument screen
The better to tell him how to control his wobbling.
And then the scene shifts to her desk, the photograph
Of her young father, newly arrived from China,
Ready to scrimp and save so his baby girl
Can go to school as long as she wants to.
And then the camera lifts to the girl grown up,
Her face intent as she gives directions,
Her hair tied in a ponytail. From your seat it’s clear
She looks less like the cherished daughter of Mr. Lee,
The owner of Northtown Hardware, and more like a twin
Of the girl who irons your shirts in the Granger laundry
A block from the theater. An orphan, you heard once,
When you asked the owner, for you’ve been curious
And now you know why. Someone should bring her here
To watch as her sister urges your brother the pilot
Not to lose hope as the houses below, small a moment ago,
Loom suddenly large. Be with him now
As he looks for a makeshift runway. Be with him
As he gropes for the switch to lower the landing gear.
This is the way to learn, right on the job,
From a teacher with a soft, musical voice
That makes you glad you’re not at home by the
phonograph
Trying to teach yourself to dance with a broom,
Your self-help chart of the steps taped to the floor.
Bashō
When my tastes seem too haphazard and disjointed
To compose a character, it’s a comfort
To think of them as inherited from my ancestors,
Each expressing through me ancient inflections.
My need before supper to stroll to the reservoir
May indicate on my father’s side nomadic origins,
The blood of a captive from Scythia who was sold
To a family in Lombardy in need of a plowman.
His marriage to a slave girl from Carthage
Explains why sea air smells so familiar,
Why I like the look of whitewashed houses on hillsides
And painted tile from Tunisia or Morocco.
To be a vehicle for the dead to speak through,
Surely that’s an improvement over being a showman
Who shifts his costume to please a moody audience.
It’s a comfort as long as I’ve many dead to choose from,
Free to trace my talent for telling stories
At a moment’s notice in the style of Odysseus
All the way back on my mother’s side
To a black-bearded Smyrna merchant.